Colorado man with nearly 6,000 fentanyl pills sentenced to 40 years

A 27-year-old man from a town north of Boulder, Colorado, has been sentenced to four decades in prison after officials said they seized nearly 6,000 fentanyl pills. The Weld County District Attorney’s Office said that the man from Greeley had dealt “mass amounts of drugs” in the county. 

Andrew Durdy was being investigated by the county’s drug task force team in 2022 for his dealings. During that investigation, officials said they intercepted three postal packages from California that contained fentanyl. At one point, Durdy also sold fentanyl to undercover officers, the D.A.’s office said, all of which resulted in the seizure of about 5,800 fentanyl pills. 

But that number “was a conservative count,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Pirraglia said during Durdy’s sentencing hearing, the D.A.’s office said. 

“Any one of those pills could have killed someone,” Pirraglia said. “Bottom line, he made a profit off destroying other people’s lives, and we won’t tolerate this type of behavior in our community.”

Durdy was sentenced to 40 years in the state’s department of corrections on December 21, the D.A.’s office said late last week. His sentencing came about two months after he pleaded guilty to two counts related to the drug seizure – one count of conspiracy to possession with the intent to distribute fentanyl and one count of possession with the intent to distribute fentanyl. 

In October of last year, drug task force officials in the county said they broke up a drug trafficking organization that was suspected of transporting methamphetamine and counterfeit M-30 pills that contained fentanyl in the region. 

According to CBS Colorado, officials found more than 65,000 counterfeit M-30 pills that contained fentanyl and more than 34 pounds of meth during the course of that investigation.